Beta > Mining Metallurgy

Mining And All Mine-Related Goodness

Teppy Tidbits

"A major thme in Tale 2 is to eliminate running. Minerals located at the far ends of Egypt fight this goal, so I need a way to make mining less intensly location dependant. Of course, having all minerals everywhere (using the old system) would skip over a fun part of the game. So, instead of searching geography (where luck plays a big part), I'm doing something where figuring out patterns is how you advance."

Skills

For basic mining, smelting, and metal-working you need the following university skills:

Skill	University	Reason
Mine Construction	Architecture	To make mines and mine carts.
Metallurgy	Worship	To make smelting pots, craft furnaces, and forges.
Blacksmithing	Architecture	To make anvils for shaping metal.
Casting	Art and Music	To make casting boxes for shaping metal.

Useful Links

Opened/Researched Technologies	Technologies Opened
Definitions Page for Mining Words	Definitions
Ways to describe Mine Outputs	Mine Description
Mineral Map to find distribution patterns	Mineral Map
Smelting Results, Theories, etc.	Smelting Combinations
Gem Mining	Gem Mining

Description of Process

(Derived from "List of Facts") (Note, in converting our list of facts into paragraph form, I removed references to "this is how it is not the same as T1." Those of us who really care about things being described as distinct from T1 already understand that. At this point, people who read the wiki are looking for facts, not comparisons, so let's start discussing the facts. :))

If you have the skills mentioned above, you can build an ore mine. Working an ore mine starts a 45 second Endurance timer, and produces a single random ore stone near the mine. Each mine can have at most 5 ore stones nearby at a time. Ore stones can be put into ore carts. This is done by clicking on the ore stone (in normal mining mode) or yourself (in advanced mining mode) and choosing "move to nearest ore cart." In order for this to work, there must be an ore cart nearby. If you have the skills above, you can build an ore cart. Ore stones can also be picked for gems, if you have a jeweller's pick, or simply discarded and destroyed. Ore stones have 0-3 random crystal types inside them. These crystals often stick out, and are plainly visible to the miner. The colors and patterns in the crystal appear to determine everything that is in the stone. For further details on colors and patterns and what they mean, please see Smelting Combinations for smelting metals and Gem Mining for mining gems. The types of crystals that appear in a mine depends on the location of the mine. It is believed that there are patterns to how the ore is laid out in the ground throughout Egypt. For more information on the patterns and the tracking thereof, please see Mineral Map. Ore carts can be pushed around, dumped out (emptied with no side effects), or dumped into a smelter. If the ore cart is near enough to the smelter, an extra option will appear on the ore cart's list of options. The maximum number of stones in an ore cart is not yet known. However, if you put more than 10 stones in the cart, you can only dump 10 stones worth (at random? or is it percentage?) into a dirty smelter or precious furnace, and if you put more than 25 stones, you can only dump 25 worth into a craft furnace. Firing an empty smelting pot results in the message "Your Smelting Pot didn't produce anything. Perhaps you should smelt more ore at pmce. or vary the source of the ore." (This message, however, does not appear when you smelt something, even if there is no resulting product.) Firing ore can result in metals, alloys, dirt, mud, sand, or nothing at all. The amount of the result depends on the number of crystals and number of stones used.

Notes for T1 Players

• Medium Stones now come from digs instead of mines.
• Coal has not yet been found in a mine. However, mines don't collapse yet...?
• Flint has not yet been found in a mine. However, mines don't collapse yet...?
• Mines currently produce no pollution. This will probably not be the case once the beta ends.

Questions / Metal Research Ideas

• how does the precious furnace work? in the iron rich Nile Delta it has produced often nothing or small amounts of copper. It APPEARS that it smelts the less common metal and ignores the more common metal, but this needs more testing. (To help out with this, go to Smelting Combinations!)
• how to properly describe the output of a mine? Take a look at Mine Description to see how to do it.
• how does mine location affect which crystal types we see, and what proportions we see them in? how large are the areas where one crystal type is the most common? (To help out with this, go to Mineral Map!)
• does limestone/lime still come from mines?
• Does using mixed subtypes, or mixing iron into primarily copper, hurt yield? We think not -- it may even help (need more data).
• Do some crystal types add to the primary type, increasing the amount of metal you get? (unknown.)
• Do some crystals take away from it, decreasing the amount of metal? (yes, the "junk" crystals are known to reduce the yield.)
• Are some types of metal only producable with combinations of crystal colors? (unknown.)
• how do alloys work?

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